What if I Tell My Story and My Friends and Family Hate Me?

I have worked with people who more than almost anything want to tell their story and who are frozen by the fear that if they tell their truth, they will lose people they love.

Have you ever been with a little kid, or even an older kid, a teenager, who is depressed or overly quiet and you know something is wrong and you also know that if they would tell you what they were thinking, everything would end up okay? You know that generally the fears we carry in our head are so much worse than reality. You know that suffering alone is never a great idea, and that if this person would just share with you their troubles, already a path to relief and answers would forming.

Of course, there are some people who would just make the situation worse. When I am in trouble and really feel like I am going to die out of fear or exhaustion or worry, there are people I know not to call. They are called gasoline, and they will either scold me or say something that will make me feel even smaller than I already do. The people I call are ones I can play tennis with in life and will hit the ball as hard and as steady as I do. These people are called equals.

I have many equals in my life and one that feels like a mother or a sister or a best friend. It can take a lot of work and intention to find an equal, and so I’m not saying these grow on trees. I’m saying it’s not a bad mission in life to search for your equals. To live in a way that you would hope your equal would live so your energy could help pull one in to your life. I had an equal that felt like a father or a brother or a best friend, but I lost him. Losing an equal is terrible. There should be a special funeral, for it’s like a house losing a part of its foundation. The trick is of course to carry the strength of your equals inside of you so you can tolerate loss.

When people tell me they are afraid family and friends will turn away from them if they tell the truth of their story, I feel like I am talking to someone who is in a flaming house and who doesn’t know it. If you are afraid you are going to lose people when you tell your truth, you have already lost them.

There are so many people on this planet. You should see the traffic in Newton Centre! You should see all the people trying to get on the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard in the summer! You should try to find a reasonably-priced place to live in almost any major city in the United States! Sometimes I think there are too many people here!

I’m not saying that people are interchangeable, but I am saying the ones you call friends and family are not staple-gunned to you. I am saying that, if being accepted is important to you, it is possible to find new people to call friends and family if the ones you have turn their back on you when you do the purely human thing of speaking your truth.

Because they are gasoline. They fuel the fire in your brain that you are not good enough, that there is something wrong with you.

You know those pictures of butterflies who are taken too early from their cocoon and they are malformed, their wings stuck and deformed? It’s a travesty not to be able to fly when that is what you were put on the earth to do.

There are so many people who don’t talk to me any more since I wrote my book and since I meme and blog all the time. I could list them if I had to, but mostly I don’t think about them, just as a child doesn’t think much about his or her baby teeth as thy fall out so the new teeth can grow in. I could get myself worked up about these people, but the thing is I know I was and am operating from a good heart. I know I wasn’t and am not trying to hurt anyone, and if people chose to be hurt or if they felt bored or annoyed by the story I told and am telling, that’s so fine and right. I get it. We don’t match.

And it’s a relief to not have to try to play tennis with people who don’t hit the ball the way I do.

What is the world going to be like when you are gone? Will anyone notice? How much of a disturbance in the field do you create? By staying small and quiet, we leave the world just as it is. When we die, it will be like we were never here. That is called leaving a small carbon footprint, perhaps. It is called playing is safe, maybe. Can you leave a small carbon footprint and play big? And why would you want to play big?

Because you can! One time I was driving a friend’s Cobra, and when I came back to the house, he asked if I had put it into sixth. I didn’t know there WAS a sixth gear! I could have gone faster! And why would one want to go faster? Because one can!!

I am reading a book right now called Can’t Hurt Me, and the author, David Goggins, says he believes most humans operate at about 40% of their potential. I keep thinking about this, about, if this is true, what would I do if I were operating at 100%? Suddenly there is a hallway with all sorts of new doors.

I want to go at 100%. Why?

The universe gave me this body, this mind, this planet, and what better way to say thank you than to push it into sixth and see what happens?